Archive: Jan 2018

For those involved in gang activity, parenthood can serve as a powerful turning point in parents’ lives. Yet, men and women may experience and react to parenthood differently. In their recent work, David Pyrooz, Jean Marie McGloin, and Scott H. Dekker examine whether parenthood reduces the likelihood of gang affiliation and criminal offending among male and female gang members. 

The authors’ analysis draws from the responses of 163 women and 466 men who self-identified as gang members in the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The authors tested whether parenthood for the first or second time reduces the likelihood of self-identification as a gang member, in addition to the likelihood of committing crimes, including theft, drug solicitation, and assault. The authors also examined male gang members’ involvement in their children’s lives based on their residence with or apart from their children. Finally, the authors controlled for cohabitation between parents, legal employment, and education to determine the specific effects of parenthood.

Prior to having children, female gang members had a lower likelihood of committing crime and fewer years spent as gang members than men overall. For first-time mothers, having a child reduced their likelihood of gang affiliation by 93 percent and their probability of offending by 47 percent. However, only male gang members who were first-time fathers and resided with their children showed significant reductions in gang affiliation and criminal offending. At the same time, these changes were far less likely to last in comparison to female gang members. Thus, this research demonstrates that while parenthood can be a powerful force for moving away from criminal identity and activity, its impacts are tempered by gender.

The Internet’s ability to disperse large amounts of information has greatly changed communication worldwide. Not only can beneficial information be transmitted quickly, but incorrect information can also spread rapidly. In new research, Deenesh Sohoni investigates how immigration numbers are manipulated by restrictionist groups in the United States — groups that advocate for reduced levels of legal immigration and crackdowns than undocumented immigration — to advance and legitimize their claims that immigration is a serious social problem. 

In 2011, Sohoni examined how 42 national-level restrictionist groups use their websites to frame the demographic impacts of immigration based on population projections. 2011 was a particularly important year for immigration in the United States, as the DREAM Act was reintroduced in the Senate, and a number of states followed Arizona’s SB1070, passing restrictive immigration policies. Nearly half presented numbers that were either exaggerations of U.S. Census Bureau projections, used the higher end of the projections without noting it, or listed projections that could not be verified. 

Of the groups that presented data, nearly half presented numbers that were either exaggerations of U.S. Census Bureau projections, used the higher end of the projections without noting it, or listed projections that could not be verified. In all cases, these numbers were treated as facts and the groups used them to argue further immigration would make whites a minority in the United States by mid-century. They also used these figures to argue for restricting “illegal” immigrants in the United States as a way to reduce crime, save public services, and keep jobs and government benefits for  “Americans.”

Sohoni’s research shows us that fake news is not a new phenomenon, and when we use the Internet, we must not only consider what information we’re getting, but also where it comes from.

Originally posted Sept. 7, 2017

Criminologists have long observed that men seem to commit less crime after they get married — marriage increases interdependence between spouses, changes social activities, and develops new thinking patterns. However, marriage is more than just the relationship between two individuals, but rather the joining of two social networks of friends, coworkers, and family members that can have other consequences beyond the spousal relationship. And sometimes we marry into families that increase, rather than decrease, our exposure to crime.

Lars Hojsgaard Andersen asks how in-laws affect men’s criminal activity. Using registry data on the entire population of Denmark, Andersen finds that, consistent with previous research, marriage reduces the likelihood that men will be convicted of crime.  However, this “buffer” of marriage is lessened by the presence of a brother-in-law who has been in trouble with the law. Specifically, new husbands whose brothers-in-law were convicted in the last 3 years have a 20% higher likelihood of being convicted themselves, relative to new husbands without a convicted brother-in-law. This relationship holds even when accounting for the characteristics and criminal history of both husband and wife, as well as the criminal history of both families.  New husbands whose brothers-in-law were convicted in the last 3 years have a 20% higher likelihood of being convicted themselves. 

Andersen notes that previously convicted brothers-in-law increase the likelihood of crime for husbands regardless of their own criminal histories — they can even “ignite criminality” among husbands who previously had no brushes with the law. Overall, the research shows that the ability of marriage to reduce criminal activity partly depends on the new network ties that marriage brings. In short, the impact social bonds and institutions have on behavior rests, in part, on the social ties that those institutions foster.

Originally posted Aug. 15, 2017

Women have made many strides towards equality in the workplace. Yet, studies continue to show that women are frequently paid less than men, women are expected to perform more secretarial tasks, and women are less likely to be promoted to higher-level occupations within organizations. And academia is no exception — while attaining tenure and promotion is the key to a long academic career, universities are less likely to grant it to women. A recent study by Katherine Weisshaar explores why female academics have a harder time achieving tenure promotion than their male peers.

The author developed a unique longitudinal dataset that includes department information and characteristics (e.g. prestige ranking, gender composition) from the National Research Council (NRC), Google Scholar citations, personal websites, and CVs. From 2000 to 2004, Weishaar documented the names of former assistant professors in 330 departments within sociology, computer science, and English. She examines three possible explanations for the 7 percent gender difference between male and female assistant professors in sociology departments: scholarly productivity (i.e. publications, awards, research grants), organizational differences (i.e. gender composition, prestige, public or private) and inequality in evaluations (i.e. gender bias, differences in recommendations).

The results indicate that women are less likely to receive tenure than their male peers across all three disciplines, though sociology and English maintain the greatest gender inequities in tenure. When women do secure tenure, the process takes longer than for male academics. Female assistant professors in sociology were less likely to publish in the discipline’s most prestigious journals (e.g. Social Forces, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology), obtained lower numbers of citations for their publications, and secured promotions in less prestigious departments.  Increases in women’s individual productivity in the workplace will not likely lead to equal representation in higher occupational positions. 

Overall, productivity differences accounted for approximately 34 percent of the gender gap, while time differences accounted for approximately 20 percent of the gender gap. The largest contributing factor to the gender gap (roughly 40 to 45 percent), however, lies within the assistant professor evaluation process that includes subtle biases and discrimination against women. Thus, increases in women’s individual productivity in the workplace will not likely lead to equal representation in higher occupational positions. Employers must also evaluate the ways in which gender discrimination both explicitly and implicitly hinder women’s promotion opportunities, despite equal rates of productivity.